


Hidden Valkyrie: Episode 3

by Celticas



Series: Hidden Valkyrie [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cannon Divergent, Gen, Genius Skye, Gravitonium, Season/Series 01, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2019-11-13 16:23:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18035036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celticas/pseuds/Celticas
Summary: Even as May starts to accept Skye, Jemma pushes her away. A mission that only Skye can complete gives her a unique opportunity to prove her worth.





	1. Part 1

They lapsed back into silence, May trying to absorb the complete tilt her world had just gone through. For four years she had held all of the blame for the events in Bahrain on her own shoulders. Only to find out that a lot of what happened over those two days wasn't her fault, a lot of it had happened before she even got into Bahrain. Skye had talked for so long and May had sat in contemplative silence for even longer that the eastern sky was beginning to pink with the coming dawn.

"What now?" The senior agent asked.

“What, what now?” Skye asked back.

“Why are you here? Why have you gotten into SHIELD?” May clarified.

“Violet was taken by SHIELD, or at least the bad actors within SHIELD.” Skye explained, leaving out the Hydra connection. Natasha had explained to the other agent parts of what the Valkyrie were doing but only the large picture stuff, not the details. “We’re trying to get her back.”

May took a moment to turn that over in her head. “Ok, is there anything I can do?”

“Can you suggest Ward for my SO? We know he has major links to some of the bad seeds…” Skye started.

“And if you can form a friendship with him, you can manipulate it.” May finished off, showing she understood what Skye was aiming for.

“Yup.”

May nodded and they lapsed back into silence. Eventually Skye drifted out of the cockpit in search of her bed, it had been a long night. 

= + =

May joined Ward for a mid-morning coffee at the plane’s small kitchen bench. Taking a seat on the stool two one down from where he was hunched over his steaming mug. She allowed her silent presence to prompt him to talk. It didn’t take long.

“Looks like Skye might end up as more than a consultant, despite our reservations.” In anyone other than a secret agent, the expression on Ward’s face, and the tone of his voice would be called pouting.

May hums in agreement as she doctored her coffee, Coulson had gotten to the coffee pot before anyone else could and she could only drink his sludge if it was liberally treated with milk and sugar. Ward has opened the topic she wanted to talk about which was perfect. Now just to let him talk until he worked around to what she wanted, she had seen how the man looked at the newest team member.

“She could turn into a solid asset, with some serious work.” His voice turned thoughtful. He straightened in his seat, chest puffing slightly as he began to image moulding the young woman. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Skye emerged from her bunk, hair in disarray and blearily rubbing at her eyes as she tried to wake up.

“Well if she wants to be a field agent, she’ll need a supervising officer, someone disciplined, someone good.” May finally joined the conversation, she kept her tone disinterested and half an eye on him, anything more and he would rabbit.

Ward swung his eyes back to her, narrowing them, trying to figure out what her angle was.

When he wasn’t able to get anything other than mild disinterest, he folded. “All right. I’ll do it.” Ward huffed as if he thought it was a great sacrifice.

May nods again and picks up her coffee to leave. As she walked away Ward called out to her back.

“Just to clarify, you were, uh talking about me, right?”

May paused to listen to his question but walked away without answering, it was best to leave him guessing.

= + =

Skye took a walk around the perimeter of the SHIELD base, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air, and not being surrounded by spies. To the agents hustling into and out of the buildings, the walk looked innocent enough. A young woman taking a stroll on her lunch break, typical millennial with her phone in her hand. Anyone who knew her would be on red-alert, Skye with any piece of tech was a danger.  The only people that knew her well enough to be concerned were hundreds if not thousands of miles away and whatever her new team may suspect about her level of skill, they didn’t know enough to be unduly alarmed.

It may have appeared innocent, but she was scanning for unprotected networks or workstations while also enjoying the sun. She wanted to make sure that the 084 was going up in that rocket this afternoon, not being redirected to some off-site Hydra laboratory. The quickest way to do that was gaining access to the base’s networks.

She fist-pumped in triumph when she got a ping. A passing techie shot her a questioning look. She smiled sweetly at him, “Beat that stupid candy crush level.” even as she swiped to bring up the game.

Flashed the image of a beaten level, he nodded in understanding and resumed his determined stride to whatever it was he did.

She leant against the side of the closest building, feigning that she was seeking some shelter from the sun while waiting for the rootkit to download itself and give her access from a distance.

“Freya. Once you’re in the system, start with the paperwork and manifest for the launch.” Skye spoke quietly, trying not to draw any attention.

“Can do.” Freya said.

Skye continued her walk, taking note of the different buildings, and people that she passed. It took 45 minutes to circle back to the plane. Bounding upstairs she grabbed her beaten up ‘field’ laptop and bounded back down to settle on the edge of the ramp and see what Freya had found.

There was a new document on her desktop just called ‘stuff.docx’, she opened it in a decryption program that read the ascii Freya had hidden below the nonsense Iron Man fanfiction the document was masquerading as. Her screen filled with ascii which slowly resolved to give her root access to the system with hyperlinks to the manifest she had asked for.

Clicking into it, Skye bit back a growl when her hunch proved correct. The 084 _wasn’t_ on tonight’s launch docket. A few key strokes added the weapon, it was the most she could do without loading the damn thing herself. Freya would keep an eye on the document and swipe movements of everyone in the complex. Hopefully it would be enough to ensure that even if it wasn’t destroyed, the 084 couldn’t just wander off.

She had finished her virtual snooping and settled to playing a game of solitaire when Coulson approached from one of the further off buildings.

“A.C.” She greeted.

The nickname brought him up short. “A.C.?”

“Agent Coulson is too long.” She explained, she could have gone with boss, but to her Violet, while a friend, would always be ‘boss’.

The twinkle in his eye was the only thing to give away his amusement. “Can you get May, I have an update on Fitz.”

Skye jumped to her feet so fast at the mention of the engineer that it was a wonder she managed to stop her laptop from slamming into the concrete. She raced into the cargo hold, passing Ward who was cleaning his weapons and heard the exchange. Taking the stairs two at a time, she was into the bowls of the interior and then into the lounge before Coulson could even step onto the ramp.

“MAY!” Skye shouted, coming as close to startling the woman as it was possible to get. “Coulson has news on Fitz, he’s in the hold.” Skye barely had to words out before she turned and ran back the way she had come.

She had to double over and gulp in deep breaths after the frantic run. She was back with Coulson before Ward had re-assembled and stowed his pistol. By the time May joined them Skye had her breathing under control and was struggling to keep from hopping from foot to foot in her anxiety. She may not yet be close to Fitz, but she was the one that had made the decision to basically asphyxiate him.

“He woke up just over an hour ago.” Skye settle a bit at that until he continued talking. “They are running tests but there has been some brain damage.”

Skye’s whole body slumped. She had done that. One of the brightest people she had ever met and she had taken some, if not all of that away from him. May, in a rare show of compassion for someone she didn’t know, lay a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. The move stunned Coulson, it would have been something his friend did easily before she transferred out of the field, but it was a side of her he had not seen in a very long time.

“They have found evidence of some fine motor control in his right ulnar nerve beyond that it will take some time to ascertain the extent of the damage.” Coulson fell back onto the formal wording he would normally only use in an official briefing. To have one of his team hurt on their second mission was making him question whether he had pushed to get back into the field too soon. “It will be a few days for them to run the rest of the tests.”

Ward, May, and Skye each acknowledged them in their own ways. Ward with a stiff ‘sir’, May a single head nod, and Skye hugged her own ribs and answered with a quiet ‘that’s good’. None of them bought her acceptance.

Coulson dismissed Ward and May, wanting a quiet word with Skye.

“It wasn’t your fault. You made the best decision with the information you had.” Coulson said.

“Ward might..” She started.

“No, well yes he might have done better, but he could also have done worse. In this game you can’t play what if or next time you might not be able to make any call.” Coulson broke in. “You need to find a way to deal with it. One agent I worked with kept a food blog for every city he went to, another knitted the most complicated patterns she could find. Find something to keep your mind occupied but productive”

Skye watched her feet as he talked. She knew what he was talking about, the need to normalise after a mission. Violet had said something similar after Eva.  She had struggled with finding something, moving between several hobbies before settling on getting her formal schooling. She bit her lip but stayed silent.

“Just think about it.” Coulson finished, thinking that she needed time to sort it out for herself. He had paperwork waiting for his approval that he couldn’t put off any longer.


	2. Part 2

“You’re late.” Ward grumbled early the next morning. It was his first time as an S.O. and he already wasn’t sure if it was him. Skye had grumbled her way through their first training session the night before after the team had watched the launch of the Slingshot rocket.

“I’m tired from yesterday’s workout. I thought I was joining SHIELD, not 24-hour fitness.” She grimaced. Normally the circuit he had put her through the evening before would have been a walk in the park, but with how much of her focus had been on the virtual tracking in the last six months, she had allowed her physical fitness to lapse more than she had realised. 

He shot her an unimpressed frown even as he waved her over to the bag he had left up from the night before and shifted her stance slightly. “It’s called relative strength training, starting with the basics.” He explained, reminding himself that this was all as new to her as it was to him.

She started punching the bag when he gestured for her to, correcting her stance and angle of hand and wrist. “And next time you do 15 push-ups for every minute you’re late.”

Skye stuck her bottom lip out in an overblown pout. He just stared back, not a hint of expression on his annoyingly symmetrical face.

She sighed. “Fine, Mr. Fun Machine.” She threw another punch, making sure to bend her wrist a tiny bit, making sure the punch wasn’t perfect. “Better than pull-ups.” She mused. “I don’t ever want to do anther pull-up again.” She whined. Throwing a punch every few words, absorbing some of the vibrations of the impact if she hit too hard.

“You find yourself hanging off the edge of a building 20 stories up, you’re gonna want to do at least one.” He said. “10 minutes.” He watched the next few hits without commenting. “You know the hardest part about boxing?” He asked once he was satisfied with the rhythm she had found, slowly circling her and the bag as he talked. Watching her.

“Getting punched in the face?” She joked, the way he was looking at her was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She hated that she had given him a position of power, as small as it was, over her, if she hadn’t been trying to curry favour with him, she never would have suggested it. Man she hated boxing, she much preferred BJJ.

“Keeping your hands up.” He didn’t engage, his face firmly locked in ‘Agent Mode©’.

 _The guys a robot._ Skye thought with a purely mental sigh.

“There will come a moment when you have to commit to this or bail. Every field agent has a defining moment. Ask Coulson. When you have to make the hard call to either dedicate yourself to this or to curl up in a ball and run.” He lectured.

About half way through his speech, May wandered onto the catwalk above the cargo area. She listened to Ward speak to the young woman who is such a short time had such a big impact. She listened to the two talking, Ward might have no idea what to teach a small-statured woman to defend herself, and from what Skye had said he wasn’t trustworthy, but the points he was making to Skye were relevant.

“How can you run if you’re curled up in a ball?” Skye asked, stopping to look at him in confusion.

“Keep going.” He pointed at the bag. “It’s my job as your S.O. to make sure you don’t die before then.” He ignored her question, stepping closer to lift her elbow higher.

“So, what’s yours Agent Ward?” Skye restarted the conversation after finishing her 10 minutes of punching. “Your defining moment?”

“Jab, cross.” He instructed.

“Come on, tell me.” She smiled at him, not moving back towards the bag. “I can get Coulson to give you some of that truth serum. You could spill your little heart out to me again.” She joked when he didn’t answer.

“You mean me level one overshare that miraculously got you to cooperate?” He sneered. Gesturing at the bag again, trying to get her back on topic.

May observed the interaction with interest, she had read Ward’s file and knew some of his history, how much he revealed would be telling.

“I hate to tell you this rookie, but we don’t have a truth serum.” He lied convincingly.

She frowned at him for a second before turning back to the bag with a huff, pretending to buy the lie.

May left them too it. He hadn’t given anything away, even though talking about even a little of his history would have cast him in a sympathetic light. Created connection between himself and the orphaned hacker they had found themselves with. It was the wrong choice for an S.O. and for someone legitimately working towards to cohesion of the team. Leaving Skye doubting the legitimacy of the supposed first interaction with SHIELD was the right choice for someone working against the Agency.

= + =

The call came through for their next mission in the early morning, two days after the successful launch of the 084. Coulson recalled Simmons to the Bus and they were off. It was only a short hop to their next target, somewhere in the Northern Midwest.

The biomedical scientist stalked onto the plane, steam almost literally coming out of her ears. Coulson had read her the riot act when she had tried to argue about staying behind with Fitz.

 Phil watched her board, letting her alone to work out her anger, and called up to May to take off. He toggled on the PA system. “Briefing in the Command Centre after take-off.” He broadcast to the whole plane before folding down a jump seat to lock in.

It was a textbook; smooth take-off and it wasn’t long before they reached cruising altitude. He gathered his files from his office and joined the slightly cut-down team in the glass walled nerve centre of his command. Stepping through the entry, he started talking. “A short while ago a SHIELD transport was attacked while carrying a priority Red protected asset off Route 76 near Sterling.”

Skye had a blank look on her face, Ward had given her a handbook of SHIELD acronyms and terms but he assumed she hadn’t yet had a chance to look through it.

Simmons allowed some of the anger to drain out of her body, a priority red was almost important enough to justify leaving Fitz’s bedside.

Ward had his standard bland expression.

And May pulled up the file to look through the information herself.

“Priority Red?” Simmons is the one to ask.

Coulson’s tone is apologetic when he answers, “The asset was Canadian physicist Dr. Franklin Hall.” This is the last thing Simmons needs on top of Fitz’s injury.

One of Simmons’ hands flies up and covers her mouth in distress.

“Oh no. Not Frank. He was our chemical kinetics advisor our second year. We can rescue him, can’t we?” There were odd pauses in her words, as if waiting for someone else to jump in and continue what she was says.

“He’s one of ours. We’re gonna try.” Coulson assured her. One of his most closely held personal tenet was ‘no one left behind’.

Ward had pulled a copy of the file towards himself while Coulson and Simmons talked. “And the attackers?” He asked after being unable to find any details in the paperwork.

“Invisible.” The single word was enough the bring all movement in the room to a grinding halt.

“Wait, invisible?” Skye asked, incredulous. She lounged against the glass tabletop, her fingers twisting a thin ring on her middle right finger in leu of her habitual phone. “Cool.”

Ward glared at her over the files. Trying to portray his disapproval as her S.O. of her excitement. It worked.

“But terrible.” She amended, the smile quickly falling from her face. “Dr. Hall was an asset?” She tried to re-rail the conversation that she had derail in the first place, looking back up at Coulson.

“One of a few select scientists SHIELD has been protecting, people our enemies would love to get their hands on.” He explained for her benefit. “We keep them hidden, keep them on the move.”

“Which is why Fitz and I were so lucky to have him.” Simmons added pensively.

“And priority red means?” Skye asked because it was expected. Her mind already moving on to other concerns, Dr. Hall had worked on some pretty dangerous stuff and any number of organisations or individuals would love to get their hands on him. Hell, Hydra would have all sorts of uses for him if they could get him away from the SHIELD protection detail. If it was SHIELD protecting him and not Hydra. That was a good place to start looking, make sure that his work hadn’t already fallen into the wrong hands.

“It means scrutiny should have been heavy.” He widened his attention back to the whole team. “We will be the first response team on site, so we won’t know anything more until we get there. Get what you need together we should be there soon.” Coulson looked to May for a more exact arrival time.

“Half an hour to wheels down.”

At Coulson’s nod the team scattered.

= + =

The site of the attack had the eerie stillness of a battlefield long after the combatants had left. The only cars on the road were those that had been thrown around like tonka trucks during the initial attack.  The driver was there to meet Coulson when they arrived.

“Sir.”

“Agent Mack. Walk me through it.” Coulson stepped up beside the still shaken man. Coulson liked Agent Mack, he had been with the agency for years and was as steady a hand as they had ever employed.

“It was pretty damn scary and I don’t spook easy boss.” Mack sat obediently on the back bumper of the SUV to allow Simmons to examine the cut along his hairline. He pointed at a tree further down the road, a large car hanging precariously from some of the larger branches. It was the primary security vehicle. “They were hit first. It came out of nowhere.”

“Nothing in the air from above?” May asked, stepping away to get a better look at the mangled vehicle which once upon a time had been a heavily re-enforced Lexus. It was now nothing more than a heap of scrap metal sitting seven feet up in a poplar that was bowed under the weight.

“Nothing over my shoulder, but what’s scary is they knew our route.” He pointed further up the road where a second vehicle was spread across the road. It was the tail in the convoy. “They were waiting for us.”

Coulson finished taking Mack’s statement as the rest of the team spread out through the scene.

Skye followed Simmons as she pulled out Fitz’s drones and set them to work scanning the large truck that had held the missing scientist. The vehicle had been torn open, like a can of spam that had been attacked by a hungry bear.

Ward was two more steps behind, just in case whoever did this was still around and wanted to hit the first wave of responders.

“Fitz….” Simmons started, turning over her shoulder to look for the absent engineer. She returned to the read out silently, not finishing whatever it was she had been going to say.

“Can I help?” Skye asked tentatively.

Simmons hadn’t spoken to her since she had depressurised the lab, and she wasn’t sure of the other woman’s feelings towards her.

“Oh, um okay.” Simmons stumbled not having expected the offer, and slightly sceptical that the hacker would be able to help with the high-level physics that were being suggested by the scans. “I think there is some sort of electrical field just in front of the cab.” She passed her tablet to Skye and placed a heavy set of blacked-out goggles over her eyes. “Yes, there it is, some sort of distorted gravity field.” Simmons voice was returning to its normal levels of excitement at the discover.

Skye pretended to watch the tablet, allowing her mind to open and expand, taking in the area’s vibrations. There was definitely something low to the ground that was distorting the normal gravitational pull of the area. “If someone had found a way to distort gravity, wouldn’t we have seen something before this? It’s a pretty big entry on to the scene.” Skye asked. The mindless question sparked an idea. “Oh, there are gravitational observatories scattered around the world right? Maybe one of them recorded something odd, maybe they thought it was a glitch in their systems. Might give us a lead on where their base of operations are. Where the initial research is happening.”

Skye shut down the analytical program that was running on the tablet opened a link into her own systems back in New York instead. Starting the code that would allow her to start cross-referencing any changes in gravity.

“Skye! That’s a brilliant idea.” Simmons _beamed_. “Now let’s just try this shall we?” She swooped down, picked up a handful of loose gravel and threw it underhand, towards the area she had been examining with the goggles.

It entered the field low before being swept up and beginning to swirl in a chaotic, multiple figure eight. Simmons pulled the goggles off and the two women watched the dancing stones, transfixed.

“Wow.” They both breathed.

“What is that?” Coulson asked from directly behind them, startling them both.

They jumped and twisted to face their boss, vaguely guilty looks on their faces.

“It a gravitational distortion field.” Simmons said again.

“Okay, can we describe it? Now?” Coulson asked, keeping a weary eye on the dancing gravel. Long experience had told him that nothing good was going to come of floating anything.

“Um, yes. That.. Yes. OK.” Simmons tried to take the tablet back from Skye.

Skye kept a hold of it, the link to her systems was still open and it wasn’t something she was willing to let _any_ of them see. “Can I try?” Skye asked.

The question stopped Simmons’ attempts to reclaim the piece of tech. She nodded and let go.

“OK, so you think it was activated by that scanner thingy right?” Skye waited for confirmation. “Let’s see, it’s emitting at a frequency of 3 GHz at a wavelength of 1.14 dm. If we introduce an energu surge of alternating frequency at the same emission it should short it out.” Skye had felt the initial burst of power from the scanner and was guestimating the needed levels to reverse what had been done. With a few tweeks the stones suddenly fell to the ground, back to being normal, laws of gravity obeying gravel.

Skye smiled widely at Simmons and Coulson.

Simmons grabbed her in a quick hug. “Well done Skye.” The Brit smiled back brightly.

“Thank you, Skye.” Coulson was more restrained in his approval.

Without the field of weird keeping them back, they started picking through the last of the crash site. With a pair of tweezers, Simmons carefully picked something up, holding it up to show Coulson.

“That did all this.” She said in wonder.

= + =

Back in the lab, it didn’t take long for Simmons to hook up the small device to Fitz’s equipment. Skye helping where she could, following the exacting directions of the SHIELD scientist. Coulson hovered in the door, not wanting to get in the way but wanting to be close by when they found something.

The two women did not work as seamlessly as Fitz and Simmons, a number of collisions only avoided by some fancy footwork. Once Simmons was set up and Skye was free, Coulson called her over.

“Either someone cracked our comm system or Dr. Hall’s movements leaked from inside SHIELD. I want you to look into it. Protection details are organised from the Hub, I’ll get you the access you need.” Coulson told the hacker.

Ward tensed at Skye being given such wide access to the agency’s systems. “Sir is that…” He started to ask, being cut off by May.

“You really think we have a mole?” She asked.

“I think Skye should go through the communication logs, rule it out. We’ll work the tractor tread that we found on scene.” He answered, shutting down any further arguments. “Skye with me.”

Skye’s phone began beeping. Following the Senior Agent she pulled it out and read the alarm. She hurried forward, falling into step with him as they reached the top of the stairs into the lounge. “Uh, A.C.? I had this idea back on site. I set up a Boolean search for any deviations in background gravity that other labs might have logged but not noticed.” She started, hesitant.

He stopped walking, turning all his attention on her. The piercing look caused her to stumble.

“I found a couple’a odd readings in Nairobi from six months ago and then a more sustained deviation in Malta.” She finished, still not sure if he approved of her starting something like that without approval.

Before he could say anything Ward approached from the Command Centre. “Treads matched a 2010 model. Found a list of purchasers within a 500-mile radius. Narrowed down to those with priors, financial trouble, or propensity for risk-taking.” He handed a list of three names and addressed to his Boss. “Three suspects.”

“Who may have sold their construction equipment to the kidnappers. Let’s go ask.” Coulson finished. “Skye, good work. Look into any connections between Nairobi and Malta after the communication logs.” Coulson exited with Ward back down the stairs, leaving her standing in the middle of the lounge.

On her way past May thumped a thousand printed pages of paper into Skye’s arms.

“Do you want me to bench press this?” She asked sceptically, giving the paper an evil eye. She was a computer scientist what was she going to do with 20 pounds of paper?

“Read it.” May cast her eyes to the pile meaningfully. “Every communication out of HQ since they decided to transfer Dr. Hall.” She left again.

Skye thumped the pile of papers on the table and skimmed the first page, it was a print out of line upon line of time stamped internet activity. Flipping on to the next page, there was a username and password handwritten in pencil over the top of the printed text.

Skye grinned in the direction May had gone, it was the agent’s access data. A quick dash to her bunk and she was back in the Command Centre. On her screen she logged in to the SHEILD network and typed out a quick search algorithm that would start parsing the communication logs, for which May had left a link on her profile. Once that was running, she set up a search for any associates of Dr. Franklin that worked in gravity or quantum physics. With the command prompt for searchs still open, she hesitated.

So far she hadn’t had a chance to investigate SHIELD’s network logs without the hoops that hacking the backdoor required, she could look for some sign of Violet, but it could fall back on May and she had only just started to build a relationship with the other woman. She lightly tapped her fingers against the keyboards without pressing hard enough to type anything.  A few non-specific searches shouldn’t hurt. Any transport out of New York soon after the invasion that didn’t align to any missions or the aliens. It was highly likely that Violet was hidden among other interesting titbits from the invading army but it was a start.

She left the searches to work themselves out and began manually running down business or research links between Nigeria and Malta.

There were a lot of them. The African city and the small Mediterranean Island nation had a roaring trade going in both directions.

The search of Hall’s associates and colleagues was the first to provide results. 23.5 minutes after setting the parameters, Ian Quinn’s name was the first to come up. The two had been at Cambridge together years ago. While at the University Quinn had written a paper on a theoretical substance, he called gravitonium, that had largely been ignored by the academic community.

“Oh, shit.” She mumbled to herself. Quinn Worldwide kept its head office in Malta for the tax benefits and the small country’s disdain for international law. Two quick searches later showed that one of his subsidies IQ Mining, the man’s ego was boundless, held significant mining rights in Nigeria.

A deep dive into the IQ Mining’s paperwork showed a history of shipments out of Nairobi to Malta that lined up perfectly with the gravitational disturbances that the labs had recorded.

This was it.

Quinn had taken Dr. Hall.

She was downloading the documents that showed the connections when the search into the SHIELD communication logs finished. Skye knew of a number of spies within SHIELD that worked for Quinn but she still glanced at the results, more to assuage her own curiosity about which of the handful of possibilities had done it, than any need for the information. The name that came up wasn’t any of the handful she had expected.

_2013-02-11 14:32 F Hall out-going external 0734 02142013 40.647 -103.149_

The line of numbers matched to the time, date and location of the ambush exactly. The Doctor, or someone using his login had passed his route information.

“Oh, Shit.” Skye said, louder this time. “MAY!” She started tearing her way through the pile of printed logs, looking for the page with the flagged message. Finding it she thrust it into May’s hands as the older woman came running at her shout. “It was Hall, he contacted Quinn and leaked his own details. They were buddies in college. I don’t know why but I bet it was something to do with this stuff Quinn calls gravitonium, which is a stupid name!” Skye was babbling.

“Stop.” May said quietly. “Start from the beginning.”


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In celebration of having posted over 100K on AO3 I decided to post and extra chapter this week! You will still get a chapter of Hidden Valkyrie this Friday also.

Skye and May were waiting in the cargo hold with a pile of papers when Coulson and Ward returned from talking to the owners of the suspect tractor.

Coulson was the first out of the SUV after pulling to a stop on the ramp. Suit as impeccable as ever.

“You found something.” He didn’t need to ask.

Ward was out of the car and past them without a word. Taking a bulging bag into the lab. Ward and Simmons began murmuring softly to each other.

“We found something.” Skye confirmed. “Hall outed himself to his old buddy Ian Quinn.” She summarised.

“Why would he do that?” Coulson asked, speed reading the file they had handed him.

“Don’know.” She shrugged. “But Quinn Worldwide has some shady ties and them getting their hands on something that would be as revolutionary as this gravitonium is meant to be is not good.”

“Ok.” He closed the file, having finished reading it. “Where do we find Quinn?”

“Malta.”

Coulson cringed. It was almost impossible to get approval for any sort of mission in the small Mediterranean country. They were fiercely independent, and borderline paranoid about their citizen’s privacy. “May get us in the air heading towards Europe. Hopefully by the time we get there we have something figured out.”

“Sir.” May said softly and was gone.

Coulson left Skye in the cargo hold to join Ward and Simmons. The three agents quickly becoming absorbed in discussing whatever it was that Ward had had in the bag.

Unobserved, Skye pulled out her phone and logged in to Freya’s text interface.

_>   S: has James checked in_

_> > F: Not yet._

_>   S: can you send him a priority alert gonna need him in Malta_

_> > F: Okay. I will let you know when he responds._

She tucked her phone back into a pocket and bounded back up the stairs. If they were headed for Quinn in Malta, they were gonna need as much info as possible about his buildings. The plane jolted the slightest bit as May rolled into take-off from the back country, grass landing strip they had set down on only a few hours ago. Skye used a hand on the wall of the corridor to stabilise herself before hurrying to the lounge to strap in for take-off. _Thanks for the warning_ , she thought towards the front of the plane.

Once they were in the air, Skye settled in the lounge with her laptop, a pot of fresh coffee and began hacking into the Maltese Department of Building Development.

For a country that was so protective of it’s sovereignty it was depressingly easy to get behind their government firewalls and pull the blueprints for QW HQ and Quinn’s personal compound. She was grumbling to herself about egotistical billionaires and their fricken’ _compounds_ as she waited for the plans to trickle through the backdoor she had made.

A window popped up in the bottom, right corner of her screen. Clicking into it there were two alerts that had come through almost simultaneously. The first was the collated results from the extra search she had started on transports out of New York, and the other was a message from Freya.

_> > F: James has made contact and confirms PF safe. He will meet you in Malta. He also requests any further information._

_> S: shoot him everything I have on quinn hall gravitonium and malta_

_> > F: Confirm._

The relief of knowing that James was ok was a weight off her shoulders that she could and did often live with but always resented. The added bonus of Mike and Ace being safe and the possibility of seeing her husband again was buoyant.

With the download from Malta ticking away, she had a bit of time to start going through the SHIELD logs. Refilling her mug from the pot, she curled up and began reading.

= + =

Half way through the flight, Coulson called the team together to begin strategizing.

“Simmons, did you find anything from the Gold?” Coulson asked as they gathered with cups of their beverage choice in the softly lit lounge.

“It was an adore bar. It means it was made at the mine rather than a refinery. It’s only about 92% pure. The cowboy got cheated a bit.” She reported, keeping the side commentary to a minimum, her mind still half on the missing Fitz and worry for her mentor.

“Can you determine the mine based on the impurities?” Coulson prodded for more.

“Dacey Mine in Tanzania which is owned by…” She started.

Skye cutting in, “Quinn Worldwide, well technically IQ Mining but same difference really.” She had given herself a crash course in the company’s properties between reading the SHIELD logs.

“Which gives us secondary confirmation that it _was_ Quinn.” Coulson concluded. He was happy with the evidence that Skye had dug up, but multiple sources was always comforting, it was getting too easy to fake some of the virtual proof and Quinn had a lot of business rivals that would be happy to frame the mogul.

“There’s no way into Quinn’s compound without a large SHIELD strike force or a man inside.” Ward took over.

Skye had given him the blueprints after acquiring them. Strategic assault planning had never been, and would never be, a specialty of hers.

“He’s got a Neodymium laser fence surrounding the property.” Ward continued.

“They’ll never allow a strike force into Malta.” Coulson winced at just the thought of trying to get that through legal. “Plus, this weekend, Quinn Worldwide has its annual shareholders gathering. We’d risk global outrage, but…”

“If we go in alone…” May took over, and in turn was interrupted by Coulson.

“SHIELD can disavow us, claim ignorance.” Coulson finished the thought. It wasn’t taking much for them to fall back into the patterns of long-term partnership.

Skye had been watching the interactions and inputs of the SHIELD agents with interest. The willingness to put it all on the line, and risk being burned, to help one of their own was inspiring. This is what SHIELD should have been, what it would have been without the rot that Skye had trouble seeing past a lot of the time.

“I can go in.” She found herself saying.

“Drop me in the hills outside Valletta. I’ll spend a few weeks establishing a cover, gathering intel…” Ward spoke over her.

“Hall doesn’t have a few weeks.” Coulson interjected. He shot to his feet, frustrated, there didn’t seem to be any good options here. A frontal assault was out of the question, they didn’t have the manpower, but they also didn’t have the time for a more stealthy operation either.

“And to restate, any agent of SHIELD caught on Maltese soil can be shot to death,” Simmons added unhelpfully. “With bullets.”

Again unneeded, Skye and Coulson thought.

“Legally.” Simmons didn’t stop.

“Not me.” Skye said, louder this time. “I could go in.”

The four agents turned to look at her, various degrees of disbelief on their faces.

“Skye this is serious.” Ward grouched, grumpy that his ideas had been unceremoniously shot down.

“Wait.” Coulson even lifted a hand in the universal ‘stop’ sign. “What are you saying?” His expression of disbelief had morphed into interested. Skye had shown a range of skills had hadn’t expected when adding her to the team, maybe there was something she could contribute in this situation as well.

“Well, I’m not an agent of SHIELD.” She reminded them. “So, I can go in without breaking all these stupid rules.” She lent back in the chair and let them dwell on that. If she was going to do it, and it was what she had been planning since she had figured out Hall was in Malta, then she needed to spin some of her tech magic. She could have done it hours ago, but it would have brought up questions about how she knew SHIELD couldn’t operate in Malta.

“International laws.” Simmons chirped.

“You said you could go in with a man inside.” She defended, only looking at Coulson who hadn’t spoken up either way.

“This isn’t something the Rising Tide can hack, Skye.” Ward sneered. He had made his lack of technical knowledge, and subsequent dismissal of it, well known. “And you don’t have the background or clearance or experience with any of this.” He continued when she opened her mouth to snark back at him.

“I know.” She shot him a humourless grin, for someone who was meant to be mentoring her he was a pretty big downer. “But I’ve got an invitation.” She showed them all her phone and the invitation on its screen. “Well, technically it’s an e-vite.” She widened her eyes and shrugged as if to ask ‘what can you do?’

“Ok.” Coulson spoke up before Ward could continue arguing. He found it interesting that May hadn’t argued against Skye’s plan, she hadn’t liked the idea of the hacker joining them any more than Ward had. Either something had happened to significantly change May’s opinion that he had somehow missed, or she was playing the long game, waiting for Skye to bungle something and then hefting a large dose of non-verbal ‘I told you so’ at him. Neither option was particularly appealing.


	4. Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any time I talk tech or science in any of my fics, I try and base them off actual science or tech but there are limits to what I can do. If you notice any glaring inaccuracies please let me know.
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy.

Jemma slipped away from the briefing soon after it was decided Skye would go in. She wasn’t a field agent, there was always work to do in the lab, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about Skye and the other woman’s involvement in Leo’s injury.

Academically she knew that it had been the best decision to get them both out alive, and that with some help and time Leo would be find. Emotionally, her best friend was hurt and she had spent a day and a half wondering if he would ever come out of a coma. She had never been in a situation where to two were so diametrically opposed.

Trying to settle into her work without the accompanying sounds of Fitz on the other side of the room was difficult. She kept going to say something to him, only to remember that he wasn’t there to hear her.

“Jemma?” The quiet question broke the little concentration she had been able to gather around herself like armour.

“Skye! Oh, hello.” Jemma fumbled the slide she was making, sending the glass to shatter on the ground.

“Sorry, I thought you knew I was here.” Skye cringed, this was already off to a rocky start.

“No, it’s okay. I didn’t hear you come in.” Jemma tried to smile, the cracks in the normally bright expression was heartbreaking.

They both bent down and carefully picked up the scattered glass. Jemma was able to muster a slightly more genuine smile of thanks.

“Were you looking for something?” Jemma asked, trying for kind but hitting closer to world weary.

“Two things. I wanted to say sorry. Again. For Fitz.” Skye’s words were stilted, unsure about the reception she would get.

It was only in the face of Skye’s awkwardly sincere apology that Jemma realised that her heart had finally given it up to her mind and she really didn’t blame the other woman for what had happened. She may never have had to make a life or death decision like Skye had, but she spent time with people who did and saw what it did to them. How a moment of doubt next time because of a fear of the reaction of those they cared about, could cause irreparable harm.

“I forgive you Skye. It was the best solution to the problem and I do not blame you for the decision you made.” Jemma took one of Skye’s hands in both of hers, holding on tight, trying to convey how serious she was.

“Thanks.” Skye’s voice broke on the word. Very rarely did she have to face someone so directly affected by something she had done, and never had she had to chance to apologise for it. Clearing her throat she continued, “I also wanted to find out more about gravitonium?”

“I can help with that.” With the conversation back on an even keel, and in an area she could definitely help with, Jemma was able to step back and smile properly. She hurried over to the holotable and pulled up a periodic table, waving Skye over to join her. “Gravitonium is a super heavy element,” She pointed to a square on the floating table of elements. “Because of our Sun’s mass it is extremely rare in our solar system, having to come from other stellar events, generally supernovae. Up until now I would have said it was completely theoretical. They haven’t even been able to make in a lab.”

Skye was nodding along in understanding, chemistry wasn’t her sandbox but so far it wasn’t anything she hadn’t learnt about when she got her GED a few years ago.

“The device we found delivered an isolated positive charge which turn the flow from isotropic to anisotropic.” Jemma’s voice took on a lecturing quality. As she talked, she pulled up a simulation of the isotropic and anisotropic versions of the element. They were oddly hypnotic as they spun lazily next to each other in the hologram.

“Wait,” Skye broke in. “You’ve lost me. Isotropic and anisotropic what is that?”

“Isotropic is when a material is symmetrical in all orientations, anisotropic is not.” Jemma simplified, waiting for Skye’s nod of understanding before continuing. “In its isotropic state it distorts the gravity fields within itself, causing an undulating amorphous shape. When activated the anisotropic properties combined with the super-heavy nature of the molecule, causes it to solidify sort of _pushing_ the gravity waves out of itself and randomly effects gravity.”

“Does the amount of the mineral change the area of distortion?” Skye asks, already picturing the devastation that could be caused with something like this.

“Its more Fitz’s area than mine so I can’t say definitively, but yes, most likely.” Jemma bit her lip, she was also imaging the damage that could be done.

= + =

“I understand your concern, but we don’t have a lot of options.” Coulson was getting sick of the junior agent second guessing every decision he made about Skye. At least this time he had waited until he had followed Coulson into the privacy of his office. He tried to express his disinterest in continuing the conversation by turning his attention to re-organising his suits, which really didn’t need it.

“Hey, I’m impressed.” Ward held up his hands in surrender. “She wrangled an invitation on her phone using insider back-channel voodoo in minutes.”

To Phil, he did not sound impressed, he sounded vaguely confused.

“But sending her in with no training, you’re taking a huge risk.”

 _For a spy, the guy was bad at picking up body language cues._ Phil mused.

“I know Director Fury felt he owed you after you sacrificed yourself.” Ward was still talking.

“And my card collection.” Phil grumbled.

“He gave you some autonomy, but Skye on a covert op?” Ward asked, not even trying to hide his scepticism.

“Are you worried about her safety or her loyalty?” Phil finally gave up on trying to ignore the conversation. No matter what the motivating factor was, the decision had already been made and Ward needed to get with the program.

“Both!” Ward threw up his hands. “The Rising Tide is the reason she got an invite. Who knows how many protocols she violated.”

Phil sat behind his desk and waited for the other man to sit also before talking.

He folded his hands on the desk, taking up the upright posture that he had found worked wonders in getting people to pay proper attention to what he was saying. “That’s her job.” He said, he knew most of Grant’s work was done lone wolf and he had negligible experience colouring outside the lines so his frustration with the disregard for SOPs made a certain (annoying) amount of sense. But it was something the younger man had to learn if he wanted to advance in the ranks. “Ignore protocol, find connections and back door that nobody else can see. Just like she did with the laboratories. Something else is bothering you.”

It was time for Ward to get the deeper problems of his chest or give it up.

Ward slumped in his seat with a sigh, releasing all of the air in his lungs in a bone deep exhale. “She’s holding back, sir. Says she wants to be an agent but won’t commit. She doesn’t listen, makes jokes.”

What Ward was describing was not what Phil had observed. Yes, she poked fun and was caged, but with her background who could blame her? And she was nowhere close to being the worst irregular hire in any of those regards that he had ever dealt with. The man smiling from the picture frame he had returned to his desk had certainly been the worst new recruit but had come a legend, in Phil’s completely biased opinion, because of it not despite it.

Phil sat back before asking his next question, relaxing his posture. Turning him from The Boss into A Confidant. “Why did you agree to train her? You must have seen something to make you think she would be a good fit.”

“Under all the hactivist crap she wants to help people. But May was the one to actually suggest it.”

Phil was nodding along to the other man’s assessment until the mention of May brought him up short. _What had so drastically changed May’s mind?!_ He had to take a moment to shake it off.

“Were you hard on her?” He changed tacks. They could agree she wanted to be there so it was _how_ Ward was going about it that was the problem, as it often was with first time S.O.s.

“Sure. I also tried playing nice. I need a new strategy.” Ward was back to being the human equivalent of Grumpy Cat.

Phil mentally scowled at himself for the comparison. “Try no strategy.” He suggested. “Stop thinking like an operative, start thinking like a person.” He took a tiny bit of sick delight in needling to uptight agent. “Maybe Skye will let that person help her.”

“Help her what?” Ward asked suspiciously. This was starting to get a little bit too touchy-feely for him…

“Help her think like an operative.” Phil kept his voice as even as possible, knowing Ward was on the edge of rebelling. “Just try talking back when she speaks to you.”

Phil turned back to the plans for the upcoming mission that was spread messily across his desk from where he had thrown it when they first came up. Phil smiled to himself once Ward had left. The thrashing of junior agents trying to learn to work with others had always amused him, even more so when it was an Agent like Grant Ward who was so bad at people to begin with.

= + =

Ward went in search of his trainee. If she was going to be going in alone, he could at least try and make sure she was somewhat prepared. He eventually found her in the lab manipulating a lump of something on the holotable, chatting happily with Simmons.

“Rookie!” He tried, and failed, to startle her. It was never too early to start learning situational awareness. For a second he was confused how he had failed to sneak up on her until he caught sight of himself in one of the myriad shiny surfaces in the room. She had probably seen his reflection.

“S.O.” Skye chirped back at him, not turning away from what she was working on.

“Time for another session.” He watched as her shoulders slumped. He could practically see her envisioning another hour of work at the punching bag. “You need to learn to disarm someone with a pistol on you.”

He left without waiting for a reply. If she was serious about this, as much as she might dread the physical side of the training, she would follow.


	5. Part 5

“Now again, slowly, what’s first?” Ward kept the plastic glock level with her centre mass. 

Skye stepped forward half a foot, inside his guard, pushing his arm up and over her head. At the same time she pivoted and moved in closer again until his chest was against her back and his arm was over her shoulder. The new position put the gun in front of them both.  Keeping hold of his arm she slid her hand down around him and wrenched it in towards herself before she could stop, taking possession of the firearm she stepped out of reach and aim at his heart.

Ward was doing his best not to gape at her.

_ Ah crap _ . 

“You know this already?” He accused.

_ Shit. Cover, Cover! _  Her mind was yelling at her.

Exasperation was always a good option. “I’m a small single woman who up until a few days ago, lived alone in a  _ van _ . I took some self defence classes.” She grumbled the second part out, as if not wanting to admit to it.

“So you have been wasting my time, instead of learning something new?” He managed to sound even more accusity. His stance widened, crossing his arms and pushing out his chest as he berated her. 

_ Classic subconscious posturing, Skye _  thought.

“You’re gonna die and leave us handing, you know that? You’re going in with almost no self-defence skills…” Ward was winding up into full lecture mode.

“I have a few tricks up my sleeve.” She bit out. 

“A couple of self-defence classes at the Y years ago isn’t going to cut it. You need muscle memory, fundamentals, the tools to turn yourself…” 

“Into a whole bag of tools?” Skye snarked, crossing her own arms, her hackles coming up. He wasn’t listening or seeing anything he didn’t want to. She had seriously slipped up but he still saw her as nothing more than an annoyance.

“How did you learn computer science without  _ committing _ ?”  He threw his arms out and tried to soften his words, remembering Coulson’s words.

She stuck her chin out, not answering. She had had enough of his condescension. 

They glared at each other from across the cargo hold. Neither wanting to give an inch. Skye had played relationship chicken with an assassin, some baby Faux-SHIELD agent wasn’t going to out stubborn her. 

The silence dragged on.

At the first sign of him cracking, she raised a single eyebrow to help him along.

“You asked me what my defining moment was?” He sat in one of the jump seats along the edge of the space, rubbing a tired hand over his face.  _ Human connection, _  he reminded himself. “I had a brother who beat the crap out of me. Me and my little brother. For nothing. For eating a piece of his birthday cake. I had to learn to protect us. The same way I’m trying to protect you.”

As he talked, the fight drained out of her. Skye had read the bare bones of the history of everyone on this plane on her first night as part of the team. But the hear it from the horse’s mouth was another matter. A small part of her, resented feeling sorry for a Hydra agent, but then where would she have ended up if James and Violet hadn’t picked her up.

“C.S. came naturally to me.” She said quietly. “It was something I could do for myself without having to rely on anyone else. As a foster kid that’s important.” She offered as apology for having pushed.

He accepted the unspoken apology by holding out his hand for the gun hanging at her side. “Again, fast. Then we’ll move on.”

= + =

“Skye?” The voice of her husband being piped into her head curtesy of Freya jolted Skye’s concentration. She had been going over the blueprints and all the security specs she could find on the compound. 

Luckily ,  she was in her bunk which was as sound proofed as SHIELD could make it, which was to say WELL. Although she had found and installed a white noise filter on the two bugs they had left behind.

“James!” She sat up even though he couldn’t see her. “Are you ok?”  Her voice came out slightly more concerned and urgent than the situation warranted but it was the first she had heard directly from him in days.

The bastard started laughing at her.  “I’m fine doll. I just landed in Malta . What’s the game plan?” His voice was velvety and rich. Soothing the worry that had been niggling at the back of her brain, he only  ever called her doll when he was in a good mood. It was a slip back into the language of the times he grew up in that was too incongruous in the modern day to be used without being noted by others.

She couldn’t hear or see it but she could perfectly imagine James sitting on a floral motel bedspread that was practically identical to a million others he had sat on over the years. One leg out be stretched out and the other would be crooked, with his foot under the opposite knee. He would be leaning over his laptop and carefully taping the keys to navigate the documents Freya had downloaded and prepared for him. It’s how he had spent countless mission planning sessions. The only difference from the when she had first started working with them was that, while still painful for her to watch, his typing had gotten miles better.

“Its finally time to go after Quinn!” Skye  smiled grimly. She had had several run-ins with the man and his company over the years as his tech was used to protect people they were going after. They had never gone after him directly because he had always had several layers between himself and the person or organisation of interest. But he and  CyberQuake,  Skye’s hacker handle, had been locked in a bitter war for a long time.

The vehemence of her words was enough to set him off again, loud guffaws echoing strangely over the sub-dermal comm unit.

The laughs finally  subsided,  and Skye took the opportunity to lay out the plan she had been piecing  together.

“We will both go in, I got us invites, I’ll cause a distraction for Quinn and SHIELD while you find Hall and the gravitonium. Honestly, I’m more worried about the gravitonium,  that shit is scary so get it out. Once your clear, I’ll put down the field and let the team in to grab Hall.” She summarised.

They talked for another 20 minutes. Hashing out their plan within the SHIELD plan. Finally, their conversation petered off into silence, only broken by their soft breathing as they just enjoyed being connected and feeling the others presence.

= + =

“A.C.?” Skye knocked softly on the half open office door.

The inside of the room was bathed in a soft golden light from the desk lamp, the puddle of light focused on the papers Coulson was working on. He glanced up at the knock and waved her in.

“What’s up?” He asked, shutting the file before she was close enough to see what it was about.

“I have an idea for the forcefield.” She sat in the guest chair closest to the door, formal offices made her twitchy, they reminded her too much of her high school principal’s office.

“Its not a force field Skye, it’s a Neodymium laser fence.” He sighed.

“You say Neodymium laser fence, I say force field.” She grinned in the face of his exasperation. “The point is, we need a hacker on the outside and I have a friend who can help.”

= + =

A n hour out of Valletta the team was once again crowded around the table in the Command Centre. Coulson was standing at the main monitor pointing out the areas of strategic interest on a map of the city and compound.

“Skye will walk in the front door.” He was saying, to which Skye nodded in understanding.

She had already memorised the building layouts and knew where the bulk of the party was going to be and the most likely holding place for the Doctor.

“The only external access point to Quinn’s underground facility is from a beach cove.  A two man extraction team could slip in there, but it’s not easy.” He pointed at the only weak point in the compounds external security.

Skye was impressed, James would have picked the same point if he hadn’t been going in the front  door with her. 

“The  perimeter is a 20-foot-high laser grid made from neodymium.” Skye added. “T ouch  it and you’re toast. I reboot the field from inside, you should have a three second window.”

Simmons set a small black plastic object in the middle of the table. Skye and May smiled at the sight of it in understanding, Coulson and Ward’s reactions were confused.

“Make-up compact. It’ll hold up under X-Ray.” Simmons explained.

“No girl should go anywhere without it.” Skye quipped. She flipped open the case to look at the powder inside. “Hey, its even the right colour, cool.”

“These turn green when you’re close enough to a computer to gain wireless access.” Simmons pointed a five little cuts in the edge of the mirror. Almost impossible to see without the signal lights. “When you have a signal, drop it and walk away.”

“And then what?” Ward broke in.

Skye put the compact down and frowned at him.  “I have  a friend who has a beef against Quinn, she ’ s going to take the field down for you and Coulson.”

“A friend?” Now Ward was frowning at her. “And who is this friend?” The distrust loud in his voice.

“A friend who Coulson has agreed to helping us. At risk to themselves.”

Ward turned to their boss, hoping for him to jump in and point out how ludicrous this was. There had to be a better way.

“I talked to Freya when Skye pitched the idea. We need someone outside the compound doing the hacking and none of us are up to the task. I understand your  concern,  but this is what we are doing . So get onboard.”  Coulson forestalled the coming argument.

Skye was  _ impressed _ .  Coulson was exuding Leadership and Rightousness and  Honour . 

The younger agent did his best to hide his displeasure, but it still showed around the edges of his ‘good little soldier’ mask.


	6. Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's back Baby! But he does get a little foul mouthed towards the end there. Sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a day early because I'm not sure if I will have time/remember to post tomorrow.  
> For a few weeks I will be posting weekly as I get a bit further ahead in Operation: Harmony.

 

The party is in full swing when she arrives. Men in business suits and women in cocktail dresses that were worth more than ten of her vans, cluster around tall bar tables. She had to tell herself that she didn’t stand out like a sore thumb amoungst the opulance.  

Penguins pretending to be waiters nimbly dodge between guests. Silently distributing pretentious canapés and proper French champagne. Skye pauses at the entrance to the lawn, taking in the obscene wealth that was on display. It was going to be her genuine pleasure to disrupt this overly coiffed garden party. 

Casually strolling through the crowd, Skye couldn’t see Quinn, but she quickly spotted James. Resplendent in a creamy linen lounge suit, his shirt distractingly open at the collar and hair pulled back in a neat man bun, showing off his cheekbones and chiselled jaw. God damn, he hadn’t shaved and his five o’clock shadow looked irrisistibly lickable. She actually had to bite her lip to keep her moan of want to herself, she was on comms with the team. 

They both took an indirect path to ‘coincidentally’ arrive at the bar together. 

“One champagne and a whiskey on the rocks.” He ordered without hesitation. Passing the flute of bubbly to her, he kept the chinking crystal tumbler for himself. Taking it with a giggle she flicked her hair over her shoulder, tugging an earlobe as she did it, signalling that she was being listened in on. 

“Jacob Kirby.” He held out a hand in greeting, using one of his cover identities that mixed with the upper echelons of society. 

“Skye.” She placed a hand in his. She was able to keep the smile out of her voice but not out of her eyes. 

They held the handshake for longer than would be polite for two strangers. It was almost a caress with the way his thumb skimmed across her knuckles. When he pulled away his fingers dragged against her palm and it was all she could do not to shiver. 

“No last name? Like Madonna?” He smirked, it was word for word the first thing he had ever said to her. 

She narrowed her eyes at him.  

“Why do people always use Madonna? Why not Rumi or Voltaire?” It was a familiar argument for them both. Although it wasn’t completely true anymore, legally her last name was Barnes, but that was buried so deep that even she struggled to find it. 

“Fair enough, I do like Rumi, although Voltaire is a bit overblown.” Each time they played this game they used different people, trying to catch the other out with someone they didn’t know about. “What’s you interest in Quinn Worldwide Skye?” James asked, his own eyes smiling back at her. 

Turning away before she could succumb to the flirty twinkle and further, she looked over the gathering. “I’m in technological development. You?” 

Simmons was in her ear, chattering about Jacob Kirby’s link to Roxxon Chemicals. 

“Mineral rights.” 

“Oh cool.” She took a sip of champagne. “We should talk.” She pulled a fake business card out of her clutch and held it out to him between two fingers. “Excuse me.” With a final, proper smile she wandered away. 

From here, James would slip away from the party, on his way to find the missing Dr. Hall and his gravitonium. Her job was to distract not only Quinn and his goons, but also delay Coulson and Ward at the fence.  

“Who are you?” A heavily accented voice spoke from behind her. 

Twisting quickly, on grass, in heels, was not easy. The move almost pulled her off balance, catching herself at the last second. Behind her two men of Arabic descent were standing. The younger reached out a hand and caught her elbow, stabilising her. The older of the two was the one to speak and he glowered at her waiting for an answer. 

The younger man removed his hand quickly one she had regained her balance. “Oh, apologies for his manners. He knows very little English.”  

“Oh, that’s, ah, that’s…” She struggled to figure out how to respond to that. “You know what, whatever.” She waved a hand between them, as if she could wave the awkwardness away. Finishing the movement, she stuck out a hand between them. “Skye.” She introduced. 

The older gentleman accepted the handshake. His hand was surprisingly soft, he didn’t squeeze like so many people did, trying to establish their alpha-status. “Qasim Zaghlul.” 

“Big fan.” She smiled widely at him, speaking before Simmons could try and tell her who he was. “You built like half of Dubai, including the Arabian Blade. I love that building, its super sci-fi. I was lucky enough to see it in person a few years ago.” She could feel herself beginning to fan-girl, but his architecture was awesome. “Where’s your wife Nadrah?” 

In her ear, May was trying to feed her information about his family. It wasn’t anything she didn’t know though. 

“Is she at home with the boys?” She accepted a canape from a passing waiter as she spoke. 

Qasim started smiling when she knew his work and smiled even wider at the interest in his family. “The boys had school and Nadrah does not like leaving them alone. And what do you do my dear?” 

“I work in tech.” She answered. 

The younger man who had not spoken again leant down and whispered in his boss’ ear, subtly pointing at someone behind her. 

“Please excuse me. It has been a pleasure” Qasim said, 

“The pleasure is mine.” Finishing her flute of champagne, she passed it off to a waiter and began circling the edge of the party. That had wasted a little time, but Quinn was still missing and James was in danger until she knew where he was. 

She had wandered half way around the garden when she finally spotted her quarry. Dressed in a tan lounge suit with his black hair slicked back, he was the height of douchery in Skye’s opinion. 

“Sipper to Bravo, I got eyes on top dog. The eagle is landing on it.” Mangling the radio procedure was fun. 

“What are you doing?” Simmons asked, clearly bewildered by what Skye was saying, which made it even better. 

Skye stopped moving to answer the question. A tally in the back of her mind was counting every second she was wasting. 

“Uh sorry, I … I don’t know. I see Quinn, I’m gonna talk to him.” It was easy enough to weave between people milling about, ending up approaching Quinn’s group from behind she could hear what he was saying. 

“I mean, that and it’s effective on the industrial average.” 

Skye had no idea how that sentence had started but it must have been funny, or at least it had meant to be funny, because the group burst into riotous laughter. She hoped it was a standard round of ass-kissing, because the idea that Quinn was fun was disturbing on a deep level. 

She joined in. 

“That was good.” The old white guy next to where she had joined them said, wiping a fake tear off his cheek. 

“Yeah, right? Ian Quinn.” As much as it made her cringe she offered him a hand. She was going to have to shower so hard after this. “I’m your last-minute party crasher. Skye.” 

Quinn accepted with a shark toothed grin, sweeping his eyes slowly from her peep toed heels, up her hot pink cocktail dress, with an obvious pause at her chest, before finally meeting her eye. 

“Oh. Wow.” He threw a flirty smirk at her. “Great to meet you.” He hadn’t yet let go of her hand, using it to draw her in slightly and turn her. “This is Skye, a member of the Rising Tide.” 

Skye used the introduction to reclaim her hand, giving the group, who had all turned to look at her curiously, a small wave. 

“They’re a group of hackers. They’ve gotten some pretty big secrets out to the public.” Quinn continued. An attempt to rest his hand on her back was averted by shifting her weight away from the tall man under the guise of placing her empty glass on a table beside them. 

Skye’s opinion of the man fell even further. How he could get away with being patronising to his investors she had no idea. 

“I prefer ‘Hacktivisit’. I’m glad you’ve heard of our site.” She took back control of the conversation, putting a bit of dumb blonde into her voice. 

“I read it. We think very much alike, more freedom of information, less government infringing on everyone’s rights, I’m a fan.” He placed a hand on her lower back which she couldn’t avoid this time and lead her away from the group.  

It took everything she had not to break it. “That explains the invite. This is a tough party to get into.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. 

“Not as hard to get into as the encrypted back channel you contacted us through to request the invite.” He returned to complement. 

She forced a light laugh and claimed another glass of bubbly from a passing waiter. “That’s sort of where I live.” She demurred. 

“You’ve got to shot me how you did that, I mean, if you sign on.” He exchanged nods with a woman they wandered past. 

Skye stopped walking, stunned. “Sign what now?” 

“I’ve been known to turn a few black hats into white hats.” He stopped and turned to face her, completely serious now. The flirting falling away to show the cold businessman underneath. “Not just for vulnerability analysis, but for creative thinking.” 

Blinking at him, stunned, she had to take a second for the words to form a coherent picture in her mind. “A..Are you offering me a job?” She almost scoffed. 

In her ear, James started growling physically impossible ways he was going to kill Quinn. She coughed, trying to signal him to  _shut up, I’m trying to work_. The message got through as he fell silent with a huff. 

“Well I didn’t invite you here for your pretty face. I didn’t know you had a pretty face. Yes, I want to hire you before someone else snatches you up.”  

He walked away, leaving her rooted to the spot, James pretending to retch in one ear and May commenting on it in the other. 

“That seemed to go well.” 

Skye ignored James in favour of answering May. “Yeah, it did.” 

She didn’t trust it. She didn’t trust him. And she had to keep an eye on where he was going, at least until James was further into the building. 

= + = 

The inside of the compound’s main building was quiet and cool compared to the bustling activity outside. Most of the security was concentrating on keeping uninvited guests outside the compound and invited guests outside, so once he had slipped past them it was easy enough to find his way to the door he needed. Hidden behind a Jason Pollock he recognised as having been stolen from MoMA years ago, he stripped the plastic from the wires within the security pad and connected a small network adaptor that allowed Freya access. 

He kept a cautious eye on the hallway as the AI got into the system. A loud click signalled the door unlocking. Pushing it open only far enough for him to fit through he pulled the painting over the door behind him. 

The darkness that settled over him wasn’t a concern. The tiny amount of light seeping under the door combined with the serum heightened senses for almost IR goggle levels of night vision. The stairs steeply lead downward in a tight spiral. From his position on the top step he couldn’t see the level below. Stilling everything in his body he stretched his hearing out. Skye was now better at this then him, his eyes trumped her, but her vibrations trumped his ears. Having become accustomed to having either of the women beside him, he wasn’t thrilled to find himself alone again. 

He couldn’t hear any movement. At least not close to the stairs. He crept down them, back to the wall and making sure to judge each foot fall to minimise the noise he was making and hopefully be able to hear anyone coming from either direction. 

The corridors at the bottom of the stairs were a fucking maze. Without the plans Skye had sent him, he would have been lost in minutes. The walls were an unrelenting dull silver, and every door was exactly the same, reinforced steel with a small window at eye height gave a view into each room. Most of the rooms were furnished with brutalist metal office furniture. And no people. 

It was creepy. At least it wasn’t concrete. The similarities of bunkers from his past was never what he needed. 

The abandoned feeling did make it easier to navigate, no having to hide from patrolling guards or the office workers and scientists that normally staffed the lair. How people thought Quinn was a stand-up guy when he had shit like this being built under his home was beyond Bucky. 

Bucky had one ear on the deserted space around him, and the other concentrated on Skye, who had just found Ian Quinn. Grumbling to himself as the other man flirted, he imagined a way or two of removing the guy’s hand without causing catastrophic blood loss. 

When he offered Skye a job, he couldn’t keep the threats internal anymore. “Try and poach my wife will ya? I’ma feed you this gravitron shit and then electrocute you. See how much you like fuckin’ with gravity then…” 

Skye’s coughing down the line finally made him stop. She didn’t need him making her job harder just ‘cause some punk was being a sleezy. She could, would, and has handled worse. 

Two right turns, a left and another right brought him to the heart of the basement. Through the door’s window he could see a small, balding man swamped by a lab-coat, hunched over a computer. Typing rapidly into the console he was turning his attention quickly between the screen and a large window in the room’s left-hand wall. 

Bucky eased the door open. He didn’t want to startle the stressed scientist, things were more likely to start exploding at inopportune times when he had done that in the past. Luckily, the other man stepped away from the computer as Bucky stepped inside the laboratory. 

“Doc?” As softly as he tried to talk, Dr Hall still jumped and twisted mid-air when he was addressed. 

“Who are you?” Hall backed into the far wall, putting as much distance between them as possible, but backing himself into a corner. 

“My name’s James. I’m here to help.” Bucky held up his hands to show he wasn’t armed… not that he needed to be to hurt someone but Hall didn’t know, or need to know, that. 

Hall assumed the new comer was SHIELD and dismissed him. “I’m sorry. I’m right where I’m supposed to be.” Hall turned his back on Bucky and started frantically typing again. 

“I’m not here for you.” Bucky said, letting his hands fall to his sides. 

That made Hall stop and pay attention, turning back around the scientist really  _looked_  at Bucky. 

“You’re not SHIELD.” Fear was beginning to creep into his expression. 

“No. SHIELD is coming though, and I need to get that stuff outta here before they arrive.” He waved at the window overlooking another, larger, lab space in the middle of which an open glass box held a floating ball of silver metal. The gravitonium that everyone was so worried about.  

“And why is it any better with you then SHIELD? Or Quinn?” Hall growled. 

The noise vaguely brought an angry chihuahua to mind. 

“Because my friends and I have dealt with a lot worse than this. And I’m not giving you a choice.” Three large steps was all it took to close the distance between them. An arm swinging out and over brought a perfectly judged fist crashing into the side of Hall’s head. Enough to render the man unconscious, but not enough to cause any lasting damage. Zip-ties out of his pockets, allowed him to secure Hall to a chair where he would be easily found by SHIELD. 

A second networking device, this time masquerading as a USB, gave Freya access to the lab’s computer systems. Bucky watched as the mechanical arms in the adjacent room bolted a lid onto the box and lifted it onto a waiting trolley.  

Skye’s earlier electronic snooping had shown a hanger a few doors down that had three quinjet knock-offs just waiting to be used as get-away vehicles for the enterprising thief. 

Half an hour after descending the hidden stairs, Bucky was signalling Skye his departure and being shot out of an underwater run way. It was the coolest, most sci-fi thing he had done, and he had been alive for almost a century and had an anatomically correct  _robot_   _arm_. 


	7. Part 7

After Quinn left her, Skye wandered aimlessly between groups. Keeping Quinn in sight, out of the corner of her eye, she didn’t really engage with anyone, just hover at the edge of conversations and laughing or nodding as required. Putting up a good act of being part of the discussions without leave any sort of lasting impact.

Slowly the crowd drifted towards the front of an overly decorated tent, gathering for their main event. A podium with the Quinn Worldwide logo emblazoned on it and a large monitor took up most of the space in the shade of the pavilion, leaving the guests out in the blazing sun. Skye thought it was an oversight on Quinn’s part, placing his own comfort above that of his guests was short sighted. The crowd fell into an expectant hush just as Ian stepped through the back of the tent and up to the podium.

He cleared his throat into the microphone, needlessly ensuring he had the attention of the crowd who were already waiting for him. Grandstanding at its finest.

“Many of you shareholders have been with us for years, and I see a few new names here, but I want to thank you all for traveling so far to this beautiful country.”

He was a good public speaker, charming but giving the appearance of being open. The crowd hanging on his every word, as he spoke clearly and pitched loudly enough that if he hadn’t had the speaker system he still would have been heard and understood without shouting. 

“And, well, for slumming it at Shaba Tal-Banar.”

The crowd tittered, allowing him a pause to sip some water.

“This country, where we are allowed to pursue progress and profit…”

Skye tuned his voice out. Taking more interest in the people listening to him instead. She recognised a few of the faces, people who had their fingers in all sorts of evil pies. Using the distraction of Quinn’s speech, she slipped her phone from her clutch and typed in a quick command to download a trojan to any available device that wasn’t carefully encrypted. The little program allowed her to mirror them to Freya’s network. Handy to keep track of what they were up to and if she needed to find any of them again, it would be that much easier. When the program finished she had access to nine devices, smiling she slipped it back into her purse.

“Skye, I’m clear with the gravitron.” Bucky’s voice came through their comm link, purposefully mangling the element’s name while she couldn’t say anything just to needle her. 

All she could do was ‘hmm’ back. 

“…They steal in and sweep it out…” 

She tuned back in to Quinn’s speech, making sure he wasn’t winding down. By the sounds of it, he was only getting started, and now was the perfect time to make a quiet exit. 

With the focus on the stock-holder presentation, it was a simple matter to get inside. Hurrying as quietly as possible to the main office, she only took one wrong turn on her way, having to double back when she almost walked into the roar of an active industrial kitchen. The large, metal doors were easy enough to identify when she found the right hallway. 

“It’s locked, but there’s no lock.” Skye reported to May and Simmons, hopefully they could help, she wouldn’t help herself along. James was free and clear with the gravitonium and if Coulson and Ward weren’t able to get in to ‘rescue’ Dr Hall it wasn’t the end of the world. The doctor was probably working with Quinn and not in any danger.  

“Is there a reception desk?” May asked without hesitation. 

“Umm….” Skye looked both up and down the long, golden sandstone corridor. At the very end, opposite of where she had come from, a monstrous, modern-art desk sat in what was most likely a reception area. “Okay, yeah. Now what?” There was a pad of paper, two pens and a fern on the table, not helpful. There weren’t even any draws to riffle through. 

“What are you trying to do?” Quinn’s voice echoed from behind her. 

She faced him slowly, giggling slightly. “Just… Looking for a pen.” She picked one of the pens up and held it up to show him triumphantly. “Here we go.” She threw another giggle in there for good measure. 

His smile was ice. 

“Got to write down all those good ideas, you know what I mean?” She started to babble, trying to distract him. “Of course, you know what I mean.” She fluttered her eyelashes as she swayed towards him suggestively. “You probably have like 10 pens for all your ideas.” A bitten lip and gazing at him through her eyelashes wasn’t working, she could see it in his tight posture. 

“What are you really doing?” His voice was firm. Fingers taped against the opposite arm where he had them folded. 

Skye took a step back and dropped the unsuccessful flirting. “All right. I’m busted.” A wide, friendly grin replaced the smoulder. “I was trying to get a glimpse behind your office doors, see how things really operate.” 

Looming over her, he stepped closer. “I invite you here as a guest, you treat me like another corrupt institution, looking for trade secrets to leak online.” Scowling he stepped back again, only after she had allowed her posture to shrink slightly, giving the impression that he had successfully intimidated her. He pressed button on his phone and brought it to his ear. “Security.” He said into it. 

“No, no, wait. It’s just with all these la-di-da people,” She gestured back at the garden and he lowered his phone in response, willing to hear her out. “You have to be so guarded, so careful. What you say, what secrets you reveal.” She said leadingly. As she talked, she back up to the desk they had moved away from. Grabbing the pad she began writing. “And… I.. was hoping.. that you and I could be honest with one another. If you know what I mean?” She flipped the pad over and held it up so he could read the ‘SHIELD LISTENING’ she had scribbled across the creamy, smooth paper. 

Reading the message, his face fell slack with shock. She had always though the term ‘mouth dropping open’ was hyperbole. Quinn just proved her wrong. 

His adams apple bobbed as he swallowed, slowing regaining control. “Um, yes. I hope we can be honest to. Let’s continue this in my office.” He stepped around the desk and down the corridor, expecting her to follow. 

He wasn’t very good at this silk-glove, iron-fist thing. His shift from suspicious ice, to welcoming warmth was to swift. Turning his back on her, not allowing her to go first was another mistake. If he wasn’t in ear shot and SHIELD wasn’t in her ear she would have been muttering at the show of incompetence but it might work to her advantage so she shouldn’t really complain. 

The room he led her into was spacious and airy, perfectly designed for the seaside villa it was part of, but incongruous for a billionaire’s office. Although, what did she know about billionaire’s offices? Most of her time was spent in the back of cramped vans and coffee shops. 

Whistling in admiration she circled the room. “My office has less space, more wheels. Wow.” She let most of her actual thoughts show. Stopping in front of the floor to ceiling windows she looked out at the immaculate lawn that lead to the sapphire blue ocean. “A view of the ocean  _and_  the pool.” The picture perfect, Mediterranean vista was impressive and a quick way to update May and Simmons on her location. 

“Not a bad place to do business.” He chuckled, still standing by the door, admiring her form as she moved. 

In her ear she could hear May and Simmons talking. “Our girl?” The older woman asked. 

“I thought she was done for…” Simmons started responding. 

Skye pulled the ear piece out and after holding it up for Quinn to see, dropped it in the last of her champagne. 

Sighing, relieved, she smiled at Quinn. “Much better. Haven’t felt that ‘someone’s watching my every move’ feeling since I failed my driver’s test.” She widened her eyes at him jokingly, setting the glass on the desk top. It was a lie, she had never sat a driver’s test. 

“SHIELD got to you?” Quinn bent down to look at the ear piece, not touching the glass in some misguided wish to keep a certain amount of distance between himself and any SHIELD tech. 

“Picked me up in LA. I helped them in a crisis, now they want to recruit me.” She moved her hands up and down, miming a balance, illustrating the give and take. 

“Of course they do.” His response was almost dismissive, a laugh catching in the back of his throat. 

“So, I played along, talk about inside info? I have a bunk on their plane!” She settled onto the end of the soft leather sofa, flashing just a bit more thigh then needed as she crossed her legs. “I’ve been gathering intel, biding my time until I could become useful or a better opportunity came along. I thought this qualified.” She reclined further into the plush cushions, playing the self-serving hacker that made up a large section of the Rising Tide’s workforce. 

He joined her, sitting slightly closer than an acquaintance should. “Why would they trust you with a covert operation like this?” 

She raised a single, manicured eyebrow at him. “Something about SHIELD not breaking international laws.” She said dismissively, loudly implying her own disregard for such things as legality. “They had no other option, where as I like to keep mine…. Open.” Knowing she had his complete attention, she turns hers away. Slipping the compact from her clutch, she flicked it open, pretended to check her reflection. 

The lights were green. 

 _“Connection established.”_ Freya spoke into her subdermal. 

“And what option are you looking for here?” He asked. 

“The Rising Tide is looking for… lets call it a partnership. They admire the work you do.”  She closed the compact and set it on the low, glass coffee table. The movement brought her even closer to Quinn. 

“A partnership? For what?” His voice dripped with his interest. Both in her and in her proposal. 

 _“System rebooting in two, one, now.”_  Freya’s voice was loud in her head. 

“For getting in here.” She stood and wandered back to the windows, trying to make it look like an interest in the scenery. It put her in the perfect spot the watch the doors in the window’s reflection and giving her a quick exit option. 

“Getting in here to what?” He also stood, but stayed by the sofa, worried he had spooked her. 

“Bat my eyes, get you talking.” She dropped the pretence of being interested or even vaguely liking the man before her. 

“Sir, we have a security breach.” Two large henchmen tumbled through the office door. 

“Oh, the timing on that was perfect.” Skye quipped, swaying closer to the windows, ready to react to whatever happened next. She didn’t expect whatever it was to be pleasant. 

= + = 

Returning to the Command Centre in the Bus, May could see Simmons hunched over the touch-table. She had been pulled away to answer a call from SHIELD HQ, they were trying to micromanage a mission they couldn’t even legally  _know_  about. 

“Our girl?” She asked for a mission update as she walked back in, startling Simmons slightly. 

“I thought she was done for, but she’s just sweet talked her way into Quinn’s office.” She didn’t look up from where she was monitoring the signal strengths of their connection to Skye, Coulson and Ward, and the compact. 

“How’d she manage that?” May took her preferred position at one end of the table, where she could see everything and every exit. 

Loud beeping from the table cut into Simmons answer. 

“Oh! Oh Gosh! The signals dead!” Simmons tapped futile at the table. “Freya? What happened?” She looked at the open phone connection the Skye’s hacker friend as if she was there in person. 

 _“It appears that something shorted the connection.”_ Freya’s voice came over the phone crystal clear. 

May and Simmons exchanged horrified looks. Well, Simmons look was horrified, May’s was mildly concerned. Had Skye’s cover been blown? 

“How did she get in Simmons?” May’s voice was rock hard. 

Again, before she could answer she was interrupted, this time by Freya. 

 _”I have a connection. Starting to take the fence down now.”_  

It was a tense ten seconds as the unseen hacker worked. There wasn’t even the sound of typing to assure them of progress. 

 _“System rebooting in two, one, now.”_  The phone connection died, killed from the other end the second Freya’s goal had been achieved. 

“Coulson go now.” May spoke quickly into her own comm unit. 

= + = 

Coulson and Ward hunched down between the edge of the forcefield and a sand dune. It was a precarious hiding place; the sand dune wasn’t tall, and a fence made from energy that would kill them if they even brushed against it. 

The comms were an overlapping sound, Skye and Quinn, and May and Simmons, each pair having a different conversation. Only long experience allowed Phil to parse what was important from what wasn’t and still be able to pay attention to his own surroundings. 

Further down the beach, he could hear a team of guards approaching. They weren’t talking and were passibly quiet, but their footsteps were shifting the sand slightly as they walked, and their footfalls were out of sync.  

So, two.  

Coming from the north. They were either very large men, or normal size carrying a decent weight of equipment. The closer they got, the more likely it was that the hiding SHIELD agents would be spotted. 

 _”I have a connection. Starting to take the fence down now.”_  Freya speaking over the comms was sweet relief.  

Then things went sideways. As the unseen hacker counted down the reboot, one of the guards shouted. 

They had been spotted. 

Ward half stood up and lay down cover fire.  

 _“Coulson go now.”_  May was quiet but forceful. 

His body reacted without conscious thought, long inbuilt trust in the voice in his ear had him moving. Tucking and rolling brought him inside the fence line. In a single movement he was back on his feet, twisting and bringing his pistol to bare. 

”Ward. Move.” The sound of his Smith & Wesson M&P 9L replaced Wards Smith & Wesson M&P 9 Pro. 

The younger agent instantly twisted and dived past the barrier. His shoes slipping past just as the fence crackled back to life. 

“May we’re through.” Coulson reported. 

In the relative safety inside the energy field, they took a second to brush their suits free of sand. 

“I’ll look for Dr. Hall down in the lab.” Coulson shot his cuffs and shook out his shoulders, readying himself for the next stage of the mission. 

“I’ll get Skye.”  


	8. Chapter 8

Quinn slammed her into the wall. One hand was wrapped tightly around her throat and holding her slightly higher than was comfortable, the other pointing a gun at her head. She was more concerned with keeping her balance on her toes than what he was spitting in her face.

“Don’t you get it? SHIELD’s against everything you stand for!” Quinn growled at her. “They’re Big Brother!” He was shouting at the end, roughly shaking the gun to emphasise his point.

Skye wrapped a hand around his wrist, trying to hold herself up and take some of the pressure of her windpipe. “Maybe.” She spat back at him. “But they’re still better than you.” She sneered the last word.

Quinn scoffed wordlessly.

“You kidnapped a person!” She exclaimed.

“I set him free! I  _ saved him! _ ” He roared, slamming her against the wall before finally letting her go. He took a step away and used his free hand to steady the gun still pointed at her, wrapping around the bottom of his fist. “And I could’ve saved you.”

“I don’t need to be saved. Least of all by you.” Skye straightened her shoulders and faced him head on.

“You’re expendable to them. They sent you here to die.” The flick of the safety was loud, a stark punctuation to his words.

“Maybe. But not to everyone.” Using her left foot against the wall, she launched herself across the space between them. Her right hand caught his right wrist and pushed it up, allowing her to duck under, around, and wrench the gun away from him. In seconds she was back where she started. This time with the gun pointed away from her, instead of towards.

Behind Quinn one of the security guards had a surprised smile on his face. “Kid’s got balls.”

She smiled back at him, keep her eyes on Quinn. “Thanks, but ew.”

Quinn scowled, unimpressed that her attention wasn’t completely on him and the comments from the peanut gallery. Shaking his hand out from where she had wrenched a few fingers, he regained her attention. “But, do you have what it takes to pull the trigger?” His tone, suggesting that he didn’t think she did.

“For you?” The crack of the bullet igniting and leaving the chamber was startlingly loud. “Yes.”

Blood soaked the shoulder of Quinn’s linen suit. Bright red against the pure white.

The force of the projectile spun Quinn halfway around. Skye used the momentary, stunned pause to push out through the windows on to the wide balcony. To further distract the guards, she sent a strong pulse of vibration in the ground below her. The resulting earthquake set the ground rippling and launched her over the low balustrade and into the pool below.

Shouting followed her down and was lost in the suffocating silence of the water.

= + =

In his dark, Dolce and Gabbana Coulson blended in seamlessly with the crowd still mingling after Quinn’s presentation. It didn’t take long to work his way from the edges of the property, through the people and into the building, entering through a side door close to the stairway down to the basement.

Some undefinable instinct was telling him time was running out. The door was exactly where it was meant to be and it was a few easy seconds of work to get the door unlocked and open. He rocketed down the stairs.

He had to keep from thinking this was too easy in case he ended up jinxing himself.

There was no sign of anyone in the lower levels and he was able to quickly make the few turns to reach the lab Skye had flagged as being most likely for where they were keeping the gravitonium. The door into the next lab was hanging open, drawing his attention. Every other door he had passed had been closed tight, the incongruity stood out worryingly.

Cautiously sticking his head into the room behind the open door showed a room furnished in heavy industrial metal lab furniture. In the middle of the room the elusive Dr. Franklin Hall was securely tied to a chair and obviously unconscious.

“Dr. Hall!” Phil pushed fully into the room. Hurrying to the other man’s side, he visually swept the room as he moved. No one else was around and he couldn’t see anything that looked like the gravitonium that Simmons had described in detail and language he had only just understood. 

He crouched beside the Doctor and lightly tapped his cheek, rousing Hall who came too with a groan.

“Hu? Wha..?” Hall blearily looked around.

“Dr. Hall, what happened?” Coulson asked, cutting away the rope with the knife he keeps hidden in his belt buckle. A gift from his great aunt that he goes nowhere without. 

“There was this man… Jack… no … James. He, he hit me.” He stood suddenly. “He took the gravitonium!” Hall was in front of the large glass window before Coulson had risen from his crouch. “It’s gone.”

“We can find it later, we need to go.” The bottom of his gut was telling him things were going sideways. Badly. Having a third party in play was an unexpected and unwelcome development.

The feeling was confirmed when the building started shaking around them. It stopped as soon as it started, but only for a few seconds. Then everything was moving, rolling, shaking.

Coulson grabbed the scientist’s elbow and bodily dragged him away from where he was standing, looking at the empty room next door. Getting out of the basement was not as easy as getting in had been. The doctor was catatonic, whether from the stress of the kidnapping, or from the theft of a rare research opportunity, or being rendered unconscious, Phil didn’t know which it was, and he didn’t care. At this point all he cared about what that the man’s unresponsiveness made his job harder.

Their escape was further complicated by the continuing tremors that were knocking him into walls like an 80s pinball in the back of a seedy bar.

Stumbling into the stairwell, the trembling finally stopped.  Coulson propelled Hall up the stairs in front of him. He didn’t want to linger downstairs, he didn’t know what was causing the earthquake in an otherwise stable area, but he didn’t want the building to come down on top of them.

= + =

Ward approached the building from the opposite side from where Coulson was planning to make his entrance. Moving through the shadow cast by the mid-afternoon sun, the closer he got to the ocean side of the building, the more security there was, making his job incrementally harder.

He had to wait behind a clump of bushes as a pair of guards with semi-automatics strolled past, before finally being able to get inside.

“This place is massive.” He whispered, pausing in a doorway just inside. 

A gunshot cracked loudly somewhere in the building. “Shit! Where am I heading?” He didn’t bother being quiet this time.

“Southwest corner.” May instantly responded.

He pushed out of the doorway and began running down the corridor, catching himself on the corner of walls to swing into the next hallway without losing any speed. Without the specially shod SHIELD business shoes he was wearing, he wouldn’t have been able to keep the speeds he was managing.

“Ward, tell me you’ve got things covered on the ground.” May demanded.

This op was going sideways and he wasn’t sure when it had happened, but sure as shit he thought it probably started with Skye. He reached out to make another break-neck turn, the sudden roll of an earthquake fumbled the catch and sent him into the far side of the corridor. 

“The fuck?” He mumbled picking himself up and continuing in a light jog, the strengthening tremors keeping him from getting back to his original speed.

“I can’t do a damn thing from out here.” May said, speaking more to herself then to Ward or Simmons.

“I’m working on it.” He ground out, the back seat driving annoying and distracting.

Exiting the building onto the balcony that ran the length of the ocean facing side of the building, a flutter of pink on the terrace below him caught his eye.

It was Skye, climbing from the pool. She hadn’t noticed the guards rounding each side of the house. They had noticed her though and had broken into a run, weapons drawn.

“SKYE!” He shouted, too far way for her to hear. There were a set of stairs that would take him down onto the same level as her, but in the opposite direction. He took them two at a time, used the newel post to propel him across the lawn. Coming up in the blind spot of the first guard he tackled him, taking the larger man to the ground. A solid punch had the guard out cold.

Ward pushed off and up in time to see another guard grabbing Skye’s arms and her struggles against him. 

Without conscious thought, Ward had his pistol in his hand and shot the guy holding her, taking him through the throat, spattering Skye in red. He was moving even as the light went out of the guard’s eyes.

“Are you hurt?” Ward asked, his voice hard.

Swallowing roughly, she found her voice. “No, no I’m ok.” She assured him.

“Just follow my orders. I’ll get us out of here.” He took one of her hands in his and lead her away from the body that was staining the pool pink.

He didn’t notice that the earthquake had stopped.

= + =

Coulson and Hall exited the building through the main entrance foyer onto the large turnaround just as Ward and a dripping Skye came around the side of the building.

“Are you two ok?” Coulson called out. He hadn’t had any contact with Skye since things had gone sideways and he was worried about her, the blood splatter across her face and neck only feeding that fear.

“We’re fine sir.” Ward answered for them both. Hand still in hers, they joined Coulson and the still silent doctor. All four of them were panting with exertion and adrenalin. The sound of a helicopter lifting off drew their attention. From the far side of the house a Bell 206 rose and pulled away from the compound, out to sea.

Coulson looked away first, focusing on Skye, wanting assurance from her also.

“Um, yeah fine.” Skye smiled weakly at him, trying to wipe away the blood but just smearing it across her skin. “You?”

“We’re good. Let’s get back to base.” Coulson led them out of the compound at a slow jog. They still needed to get out of there, but for now no one seemed to be chasing them. Skye had stashed a car down the road and from there it was easy enough to find a dinghy to get out to the lifeless speck of sand and rock they had landed the Bus on.


	9. Chapter 9

The trip back to the plane was just long enough that as the four of them shuffled up the ramp they were all flagging from an adrenalin crash.

Simmons was waiting to meet them, armed with a full med-kit she herded them into the jump seats and set about passing out water bottles and trying to spread metallic thermal blankets across their shoulders. Skye and Hall allowed the fusing with a smile, Ward huffed while still accepting the water and blanket, and Coulson took the water and shrugged off the blanket and spritely avoided her attempts to keep him seated.

“Simmons!” His voice was right on the edge of a bark when she tried to keep him down. “I am fine and I have work to do. Get some food and wash up, debrief in 45 minutes.” He told them all, then hit the PA that would connect him to the upper reaches of the craft. “May get us out of here. We need to return Dr. Hall to the Hub” 

That finally got a response out of the Doctor.

“NO! We need to find the gravitonium.” He stood, letting the blanket pool around his feet.

“And where do we start looking doctor?” Coulson turned on him. This whole thing had been this idiots fault and now he had the balls to start making demands? “You lost it! We have no leads! We don’t even know who took it or why!” Coulson left, if he stayed in the same room of Hall right now, he didn’t know what he was liable to do. “Ward, put him in the Cage. HQ can deal with him.”

“Sir.” Ward gripped Hall around the upper arm, hard, and started to lead him from the room.

“What? No!” Simmons tried to get in front of Ward, trying to stop him. “He’s one of us!” She reminded them.

Ward glared down at her. “Move.”

Simmons glared right back. Not willing to step aside.

“Simmons this isn’t helping.” Skye said from where she was still sitting.

The expression Simmons shot at Skye was part heartbreak, part disbelief. How could Skye, the anarchist hacker, be supporting locking Dr. Hall up?

In that moment of distraction Ward moved around her, towing Hall up the stairs.

“It’s ok, Doctor Simmons.” The scientist looked down at her before being taken away.

“How can you agree with this?” Simmons turned on Skye.

“I don’t, but the guy got people killed at the ambush and let someone steal the gravitonium, the stuff  _ you _ said was as dangerous as a nuclear weapon. All instead of trusting the people he works with. Even in the Rising Tide you have to trust you people.” Skye put a gentle hand on Simmons’ shoulder, pressing her into the jump seat Skye had just abandoned. 

Jemma had had a rough few days and Skye could see it catching up on her. She sat beside the biochemist as the fight drained out of her lithe form.

Rubbing at her eyes, she finally nodded. “You’re right. He should have trusted us.” There was the glimmer of tears in her eyes when she looked at Skye. “Why didn’t he?”

“I don’t know.” Skye slumped against the bulkhead, drawing her knees up to her chin awkwardly. “Sometimes people just lose faith I guess.”

The two women lapsed into silence.

Simmons wrinkled her nose. “You should get a shower before debrief.” She pushed away from Skye.

“Are you saying I stink?” Skye got up with a laugh.

“Oh! No! Well, yes. I mean. You smell of chlorine.” Simmons said, blushing. “Why do you smell of chlorine?” Her eyebrows drew down as she tried to work it out.

“I jumped in a pool.” Skye explained. The chemicals were making her clothes stick to her and her hair was hanging in clumps. She lifted one of them to inspect it. “Yep. Shower.” She was half way to the stairs before she stopped. “It’ll all work out, you’ll see.” She offered a small smile and then left to find a shower and some clean clothes.

= + =

Skye was again the last of the team to get to the meeting. Ward had been in the shower when she got upstairs, and she didn’t want to eat before getting clean. Now, armed with a sandwich and a beer she took a seat next to Simmons in the lounge.

Coulson frowned at her choice of drink, so she took a large gulp in defiance. It had been a long day! He shook his head at her before starting the meeting.

“Skye, walk us through your movements.” 

They listened attentively without interruption until she got to the point of her shooting Quinn.

“You shot him?” Ward asked, sceptical.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes.”

“When did you learn to shoot?” He asked.

“I told you I lived alone in a van, I took some self defence classes.” She crossed her arms defensively.

“At the Y.” He almost growled.

“I never said that. You did.” She shot back.

“Stop.” Coulson broke in, this wasn’t helpful. “What happened after you shot Quinn?”

“I went out the window.” She said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe. “Climbing out of the pool I ran into Ward.” She finished. 

 

= + =

After the  _ lengthy _ debrief, May followed Coulson to his office. Closing the door behind her she started speaking. “You’re making a habit of it.”

“Of?” Coulson dumped the pile of files onto the top of his already crowded desk, at some point he would get the backlog cleared.

“Of these close calls.” A dark frown was firmly entrenched on her face. “I don’t enjoy running back end.” If something had happened to Skye today, because she had handed the girl off to Ward, she would never forgive herself.

Coulson let himself fall heavily into his chair, uncaring that she was still standing at ease across from him. “If you want off the plane go ahead.”

Her hands landing on the desk sent a cascade of paper onto the floor. “I want in.” Pulling in a deep breath she stood upright again, this time in perfect parade rest. “Reporting for combat next time it’s up.”

He could almost see her having to hold back the salute they both knew she wanted to add at the end.

“You committed to the cause or just watching my back?” Elbows on the desk, he steepled his fingers and watcher her over them.

“Same thing.” Her hackles were settling, the ghost of a smile on her face.

Coulson smiles back at her. It’s good to have his best friend back.

= + =

Using the same tactics to approach Simmons as she had used a few days earlier with May, Skye brewed two mugs of tea, English Breakfast this time, and loaded them on a tray with sugar and milk. She may take her tea black, but the Englishwoman probably didn’t. Skye found Simmons in her bunk, sitting on the bed flicking idly through a Scientific America magazine that Skye was sure was a few years old.

“Is this a bad time?” She asked from the door, carefully holding the full tray in front of her.

Putting the magazine aside, Simmons took the tray from her, placing it in the middle of the bed. She sat at one end leaving the other free for Skye.

“I couldn’t find a teapot.” She felt an odd desire to apologise for that.

Simmons twisted around and opened one of the storage compartments at the head of her bed. She pulled a packet of jaffa cakes, placing them beside the milk. “That’s fine. I don’t think we have one.” Simmons said, adding a splash of milk and half a teaspoon of sure to her drink. She hummed happily at her first sip, a soft smile breaking across her face. “Thank you. This is exactly what I needed.”

Skye picked up her own mug, cradling it in her hands. “No problem. Have you heard anything about Fitz?” She asked, keeping her eyes on the dark liquid.

“Yes. The results from his latest tests came through just before take-off.” Simmons turned on her tablet and showed it to Skye. The screen was filled with a jumble of words and numbers and charts.

“I don’t know what this means.” Skye said with an amused quirk to her smile. It was nice that Simmons never assumed what she would or would not understand.

“They have found some anomic aphasia, he sometimes can’t find the word he wants. And the ulnar nerve damage, which isn’t as bad as they thought it was. With some remedial physical therapy, he should make a full recover. He can do the PT on the plane if Coulson okay’s it.”

Skye gently freed Simmons’ still full mug from the other woman’s hands, placing both cups carefully on the ground. Free from obstacles, she gathered Jemma in a tight hug. “Jemma that’s awesome! I’m sure Coulson will let Fitz come back!” She spoke into the honey-brown hair.

Jemma shook as the tension and worry broke under the relief that getting that report had brought. Skye’s happiness allowing her brain to finally accept that her best friend was going to be ok. 


	10. Chapter 10

They had been ordered to return Dr. Hall to the Treehouse. It would be the first full SHIELD base that Skye had been to, she didn’t count the Slingshot because it wasn’t much more than a glorified air field and launch pad. The team wasn’t talking about what exactly was going to happen to the disgraced researcher. All they would say was that it was a 5-hour flight and they would be handing him off to the team on the ground for debrief.

Rather than continue to annoy everyone else trying to get information they weren’t going to give, Skye holed up with her laptop in the backseat of the SUV. The tinted windows filtered most of the light from the cargo hold, and the bullet proofing also acted as fantastic sound proofing. Sitting in the blue-white glow of her screen she got to work triangulating the plane’s heading and their estimated arrival time. The answer was a 100-mile circle in the middle of Brazil. 

‘Treehouse’ she should have guessed. 

After narrowing down their destination, she got to work on updating the network decryption and worm program. It had been ok for the Slingshot but that required time and proximity that she probably wouldn’t always have. Was there a way she could encode a program within the short range comms that would automatically create a backdoor for Freya to get into? Ideally, any time the Bus connected to a SHIELD frequency it would activate. A solid hour of coffee fuelled coding had the basic bones of the program. She left it to Freya to flesh it out, for now she needed to crash.

The lab was quiet and dark when she got out of the car. The white glow from the refrigeration units, and the soft hum of sleeping equipment turning what was normally the beating heart of the ship into an eerie void. She had never seen the room without at least one of the science twins diligently working away. The space was colder.

Her feet dragged in exhaustion as she mounted the stairs. It had been a long day, with a lot of ups and downs, and there wasn’t going to be that much of a chance to rest. 

She flopped face first onto her small bunk and was out before she had even face-planted into her pillow. Her body only half on the bed. 

An hour later, that is how Coulson found her. Snoring softly into her pillow looking like she was seconds away from bonelessly sliding to the floor. Her laptop was abandoned on the floor, lines of code slowly scrolling down her screen. He took a slightly closer peek at the program, wondering what she was working on, but the only things he recognised was a few names ‘Freya’, ‘Violet’, and ‘Var’, and some Wi-Fi frequencies that looked oddly familiar but that he couldn’t place. I.T. had never been his strong suit.

He knocked on the open door, the thought of closing it hadn’t even crossed her mind. “Skye? We’re about to land.” He told her as she slipped off her bed onto the floor in an effort to turn around and face him.

She sat on the soft, cream carpet blearily blinking up at him, stunned from sleep. “Huh?” She asked unintelligently.

“Strap in.” He offered a hand up, which she accepted. Closing her laptop as she got up.

The team shuffled tiredly down the lowering ramp in a straggling line. Coulson was leading, the only evidence of his exhaustion was in the slightly skewed Windsor knot, May and Ward were next, frog marching Doctor Hall off the plane, Simmons and Skye were the last, they were using each other to keep upright. Shoulders leaning heavily together. Suddenly, Skye found herself unsupported and was only able to catch herself from falling to the floor by throwing a hand up against the SUV, stumbling more than necessary to keep from touching Lola. Simmons practically flew down the ramp, passing the rest of them in a flurry of flying hair and cardigan. Waiting at the bottom to accepted her ecstatic hug was Fitz. He was looking better than the last time any of the others had seen him, although his left arm was being supported in a sling and his hair was even more disordered than normal.

The older agents continued passed the reunion, completing the handover of the doctor to the waiting team of Intel Agents and Security. Skye joined the scientists and when Simmons’ hold on Fitz began to loosen, Skye pulled him into an equally tight hug, relieved that he was there and mostly ok. The hug went on long after it should have, but she just couldn’t convince her arms to let go.

“I am so sorry.” She whispered into his ear. Only for him.

“It’s alright.” Fitz whispered back.

Sniffling back a tear, Skye was able to let go.

“Welcome back Agent Fitz.” Coulson said, shaking his hand.

May and Ward didn’t say anything, just exchanging a hand shake and shoulder clasp with the engineer.

“Th,thank you sir.” Fitz stuttered. 


	11. Chapter 11

The Cube on Deer Isle, Maine fell out of use before the Strategic Scientific Reserve became the Strategic Homeland, Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. For decades, Violet and he had been using it to store some of the things the removed from SHIELD or Hydra, either directly or before they could even become aware of it, until they could decide what to do with it. Some of the items were still stored there, others had been moved to other sites, and most of them had been destroyed.

Getting the gravitonium out of Europe had been easy enough. James had used the stolen Quinjet to get to a friendly fishing boat that regularly smuggles things for them and others. In the middle of the Atlantic he ditched the jet, letting it sink to the bottom of the ocean after dragging his cargo across.

The next week was a waiting game of tacking across the cold northern waters. Closing in on midnight on the next new moon, the ships captain put in half way between Portland and Brunswick on a dark stretch of sandy beach that quickly transformed into thick pine forests. A couple of the crew helped him move the large glass box into the tree line. He watched as they quickly cut through the gentle waves, back to their ship. He waited until the boat was out of even his enhanced sight. He waited again.

Just after 2am, he dragged the box further into the undergrowth, covering it in fallen branches, soil and pine needles. The dim light from the distant stars was just enough for him to avoid the tree roots and rabbit holes that would have caused a turned or broken ankle in anyone else. Heading inland it didn’t take him long to find a dirt road, which lead to a paved road, which lead to a small hamlet. 

On the edge of town, he found an old pick-up truck tucked behind a hardware store. With pealing red paint that was turning brown with age and a thick layer of dust over the dashboard and steering wheel, it didn’t look like anyone would be missing it any time soon. Some pressure and torsion on the door had it popping open without too much fuss and it was the work of 30 seconds and a piece of sharp metal he had picked up for the job, to have to engine sputtering to life. 

Less then fifteen minutes after walking into town he was driving back out, heading in the opposite direction from the one he needed. He drove north towards Brunswick for a while before doubling back.

As the sun rose to his left, he pulled the truck off to the side of the dirt road right next to where he had exited the trees hours earlier. The increased light made it a quick job to find the gravitonium and shift away the debris he had used to hide it. Getting it across the uneven ground and into the deep bed of the truck was much harder on his own and by the time he had it strapped in and covered, he had sweated through the light t-shirt and the sun was beginning to burn the back of his neck as it steadily moved towards midday. 

A straight drive from where he had pulled ashore to Lincolnville, where they had a small boat stashed to get across to deer island, would take just over an hour and a half. With the amount of back tracking, and time for stealing a new car every few hours it took James almost two days from when he first came ashore to reach the small marine in a different beat up truck. This one covered in green paint that was in only slightly better condition than the first.

“Hey Joe.” James greeted the grizzly old harbor master. Joe had been working in or around the harbour since he was a boy. Never once had he commented on the fact that James and Violet never seemed to age, and he had never asked about what they and the people they sometimes turned up with did. In thanks, they always over paid when the marine fees were due and did their best to keep the chaos that sometimes followed them as far from the sleepy little town as possible.

“James.” Joe, he was used to the random comings and goings of James and his friends. Sometimes he would see them every few days for a couple of months, then it would be six months or more between visits. “Just you?”

“Just me.” James confirmed as he collected one of the trolleys that Joe kept in decent running order. Many of the boats moored in the small harbour were used for long fishing trips or island-hopping holidays so there was often a need to load or unload crates of stores.

James waved away the offer of help getting the box out of the tray, the less people who got close to the gravitonium the better. 

“Where are the girls?” Joe asked as he was returning the trolley, the gravitonium now safely onboard. “It hasn’t been often that I’ve seen you without that lovely wife of yours since you got hitched.” The older, in appearance at least, man was leaning against the bare weathered wood of the harbour master’s office, one of his constant cigarettes smoking gently in an ash tray at his side.

James joined him, bumming a smoke which he only did if he was alone. “Vi is in Europe visiting family.” He lied smoothly as he lit up. “Skye’s doing some contracting work out West, I’ll probably join her once I’m done here.” Or at least go skulk around close to wherever she was in case she needed help.

The two men sat in silence, smoking their cigarettes and watching the play of colours across the sky from the sun setting behind them. James had to wait for the tide before leaving and the comfortable silence with someone else was preferable to sitting alone, worrying on the boat.

Full tide was due just after sun set, so as the last of the brilliant pinks and purples fades James stubbed out the end of his smoke and nodded at Joe in farewell, no need for words. 

The crossing to deer island was choppy. A small squall blowing in from the north. Pushing the small craft to it’s limits he just beat the first heavy drops of rain to shore. Tying up it wasn’t long before he was soaked. The glass box was made slippery in the rain and pulling it out of the boat in the dark was a long and frustrating ordeal, taking longer to get it on the small wharf that was hidden from the water unless you knew what to look for, then it took to get to the deserted island.

With the help of a second trolley, he got the gravitonium inside the only above ground structure on the island, a small 8-foot square cube of cement that hid an old elevator that still ran on a human cranking a handle. It was annoying and time consuming, but not hard, to travel the two stories down into the small base. Moving into the first room he kicked the main generators into life. A smaller generator housed at the back of the building was constantly on, running the small amount of security that Skye had been adding to over the years. Each of their tablets would have pinged with an alert before he was even a foot down the elevator shaft, and a photo would have been sent as he entered the corridor outside the elevator.

If he hadn’t entered his security number at the top the elevator wouldn’t have made it to the bottom intact, a small charge would have shredded the cabled and sent the metal box plummeting to the bottom, killing anyone inside. The press of his thumb to a biometric reader just inside the first room unlocked the rest of the base. There were a few people with security codes, but only Violet’s, Skye’s and his thumbs could unlock the base.

With dusty yellow lights flickering into unsteady life, he went back to pull the trolley from the elevator and wrangled it down the long corridors, slowly circling down to the lowest level of the complex, a further two stores below the entrance. 

The lighting this far down was even worse, flickering more off then on. He pulled open a heavy steel door halfway down one of the side corridors and unloaded the glass box inside. It took all of his weight to close the door on the box. A quick spin of the handle had thick bolts locking into place and the removal of the handle had the destructive mineral as close to inaccessible as he could make it.


End file.
